Cuba’s Long Night Nears Its End
If a dove arrives/ At your window, /Treat her with affection/ For she is my own self./ Tell her your loves,/My darling life,/Crown her with flowers,/ For she belongs to me.
—Sebastián Iradier, La Paloma
I grew up listening to a beautiful classic folk song about Cuba, La Paloma (The Dove), beloved of my parents and their circle. It’s about a sailor who falls in love with the island and a beautiful woman on it. I didn’t hear it much over the past 40 years while becoming totally Americanized. But Cuba never left me like I did her at age six.
For one thing, my father was making a prestigious mark at Georgetown University teaching and writing about Cuba’s descent into Marxist hell—much to the irritation of his old school chum, Fidel Castro. And dad started at a time—the late Sixties—when many college students deemed Castro a Byronic hero, and anti-capitalist fervor was at its peak.
Dad outlasted them, even though he couldn’t outlive Castro. But at least the dictator lived long enough to see his communist dreams dissolve into dust, and his Soviet masters fade to nothing. While his brother Raúl can watch the communist regime he co-ruled succumb to American capitalist might.
For now, I’m getting reacquainted with the Cuban heritage I ignored for most of my adult life.
Then there was my mother. As I began gaining recognition as a writer, she kept urging me to write stories about Cuba’s heroic past, in which her side of the family played a prominent role. My great-grandfather, Colonel Guillermo Mascaró, was a famous Cuban army doctor who fought against the Spaniards in the War for Independence.
“But, mom,” I’d respond. “All those glories run into a historical black hole in which Cuba is still trapped. Any epic tale has the same lousy ending. So what’s the point?” My mother would sadly shake her head at my intransigence.
Mom died last year, shortly after Trump’s return to the White House. We both sensed something had changed in regard to Cuba. I wish she’d lived a little longer to appreciate how much. After 67 years, the liberation of Cuba appears at hand. And that hand is Donald Trump’s.
In that vein, there’s already a joke going round the Cuban exile community, of which I’m by birth a member. A bunch of Iranian expats are in a bar celebrating Operation Epic Fury, when a group of Cuban expats walk in and notice the Iranians. “Hey, you guys,” one Cuban says. “You jumped the line.”
The joke is made timelier by the signals increasingly coming out of the White House last week.
March 5, Trump to Politico: “They want to make a deal so badly, you have no idea…. Major changes will be happening in a few weeks.”
March 6, Trump to CNN: “Cuba is gonna fall pretty soon…. They want to make a deal so badly…. We’re really focused on this one right now. We’ve got plenty of time, but Cuba’s ready — after fifty years.”
March 7, Trump at the Shield of the Americas Summit: “Cuba’s at the end of the line. They’re very much at the end of the line. They have no money. They have no oil. They have a bad philosophy…. It’s in its last moments of life the way it was.”
And if recent history has taught us anything, Trump’s predictions tend to happen.
As for my having disappointed mom re writing about Cuba, I’m sorry she won’t have the chance to read my new novel, The Camelot Trail, a sequel to The Washington Trail. In her honor — and to stay ahead of current events in the political thriller game — I added a little exchange between the two series detectives, Mark Slade and Neil Cork.
Cork entered Slade’s apartment bearing two bags marked Oasis Café. He made a right to Slade’s makeshift corner dining room, and put the bags on the square wood table. He took out two Styrofoam coffee cups from one bag, two wrapped long sandwiches from the second, and sat down in the left chair.
Slade emerged from the bedroom and took the seat at the far end, his back to the wall. Cork pushed a sandwich and coffee toward him. Slade unwrapped a Cuban Sandwich.
“Cuban sandwiches taste better these days,” he said.
“And the coffee,” said Cork, taking an appreciative sip of his. “After 65 years—a free Cuba. We did our bit for that outcome.”
“Not exactly Rough Riders, but yeah, we did.”
I’m also planning to return to Cuba in person. To walk the gorgeous island I toddled as a little boy. And to drink Cuba Libres on Varadero Beach, where my family vacationed. Once the satanic regime that cursed it is in ashes.
For now, I’m getting reacquainted with the Cuban heritage I ignored for most of my adult life — the heroes mom revered, and the music I once enjoyed, in particular La Paloma. In the week that’s coming/ It makes me laugh./ From the church, side by side,/Yes indeed, sir!/ We’ll go off to sleep,/ There I go! And there, I too shall go.
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